The next week
Nia is 13
Nia’s doctors check how many cells they collected. It was not as many as they need, so they will try again.
Doctors need a lot of blood-making stem cells to do gene therapy.
If they don’t get enough cells:
- They try again.
- You need to do more blood transfusions and cell collection (apheresis).
- It can take 2 or more tries in the hospital to collect enough cells.
- They save your stem cells each time and add them together until they collect enough.
Sometimes, after many tries, doctors cannot get enough cells.
If this happens, your doctor will talk to you about other options.
Millions of blood-making stem cells need to be collected.
- Doctors need to collect 15 to 20 million blood-making stem cells per kilogram of body weight from you.
- Stem cells are very tiny, but your doctors can measure how many cells are collected.